Daily News

Steve Jobs: An Unwanted Child (11053)

Adopted as an infant, he was grateful for the gift of life.

He died a devoted family man, with his wife and children at his bedside. But Steve Jobs didn’t come into the world as the object of his parents’ devotion. His birth was complicated and all too human in its details, and yet his story upends the notion that “unwanted” children are doomed from the start.

Jobs’ death saddened many of his admirers, who developed a firsthand appreciation for his commitment to excellence and viewed Apple’s explosive success as a bright spot amid unrelenting economic gloom. But I’ve always been more intrigued with the backstory of his closely guarded personal life, and thus welcomed Walter Isaacson’s newly released biography, Steve Jobs.

Isaacson does not disappoint. Not only will techies learn lessons about business leadership and innovation, this portrait provides rich insights into Jobs’ struggle to overcome the painful sense of abandonment that contributed to his trademark non-conformism.

From his childhood, Jobs suffered from the emotional wounds inflicted by his unmarried biological parents, who put him up for adoption. Like many such children, he was “unwanted.”

Jobs’ personal history testifies to children’s need for family stability — even for an individualist like Jobs. However, the reader also learns that, contrary to the gloomy predictions of abortion-rights supporters, “unwanted” children consistently defy set expectations about their ability to succeed and find happiness, and the love of adoptive parents can make all the difference.

Decades later, Jobs would express gratitude that his mother didn’t abort him. And his own experience confirms that an unwanted child can ultimately reverse the pattern of male irresponsibility bequeathed to him by his biological father.

Isaacson traces Jobs’ effort to find his biological mother, a Midwestern graduate student raised in a Catholic family. “I wanted to meet my biological mother mostly to see if she was okay and to thank her, because I’m glad I didn’t end up as an abortion. She was 23 and went through a lot to have me,” Jobs told his biographer.

The founder of Apple had already made his mark when he located his mother, Joanne Simpson. The two had an emotional meeting, and Simpson tearfully apologized for putting him up for adoption. He learned that in 1955, at the time of his birth, she and his biological father had delayed marriage because of the objections of their extended families.

Subsequently, the couple did marry and had a daughter, the novelist Mona Simpson. But by then, Jobs’ adoption had been finalized. His biological father soon abandoned the family.
As a youngster, Jobs struggled to resolve his feelings of abandonment.

In one childhood experience described in the book, Jobs tells a close friend that he is adopted. She responds that his parents must not have “wanted” him. He rushes home to seek the reassurance of his adoptive parents, Clara and Paul Jobs, who insist that they chose him specifically and that he is very “special.”

In truth, Jobs was “smarter” than his parents, who maintained a modest home for him and a daughter, also adopted. The family attended a Lutheran church, but Jobs, ever the skeptic, questioned how an omnipotent God allowed for suffering in the world and rejected Christianity.
His specialness was noted during elementary school, when teachers, impressed with his superior intelligence, suggested he skip several grades.

Paul Jobs cut his son a lot of slack, allowing Steve to ignore parental orders and requirements. Steve chose an expensive private college, despite the family’s limited finances. But after a semester at Reed College, he realized it was too expensive for his parents and dropped out.

As Isaacson tells it, the competing experiences of abandonment and specialness produced a complex personal identity. He was a non-conformist in the business world, which worked to his advantage. But he could also be cruel and destructive.

Like many children who have been abandoned, Jobs would repeat the pattern as an adult.

When he learned that a live-in girlfriend was pregnant, he questioned whether he was the father. And despite a sense of gratitude that his own life had been spared in the womb, he considers an abortion as a solution to the pregnancy.

Once his daughter, Lisa, was born, he initially refused to acknowledge her as his own, but finally agreed to a paternity test and then began to pay child support.

Decades later, Lisa’s mother told Isaacson that “being put up for adoption left Jobs full of broken glass.”

A friend and co-worker at Apple made a similar observation: “The key question about Steve is why he can’t control himself at times from being so reflexively cruel and harmful to some people.
“That goes back to being abandoned at birth. The real underlying problem was the theme of abandonment in Steve’s life.”

Jobs disputed this diagnosis of his behavior, and he would later marry and have three more children. He and his wife celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary before his death. He came to regret his treatment of Lisa, and during her teenage years, she moved into her father’s household. However, the relationship remained tempestuous, though they patched up their differences before his death.

Jobs didn’t meet his biological sister, Mona Simpson, until both were adults, but the two immediately became close. After his death, Simpson offered a eulogy that reflected on the emotional scars inflicted by their biological father and the healing power of her brother’s love.

“Even as a feminist, my whole life I’d been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I’d thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man, and he was my brother,” said Simpson.

Steve Jobs learned to become a committed husband and father, inspired, no doubt, by the generous example of his adoptive father. But his story also reveals that an “unwanted” child can choose to end a generational pattern of abandonment. Had he lived longer, perhaps he would have come to understand that abortion is always wrong and not just a personal decision.

Certainly, Jobs proved himself capable of raising a relatively normal and close family as a billionaire. There’s a wonderful scene in the biography when Bill Gates comes to pay his respects to his old nemesis.

While Gates lives in a house that rivals the square footage of Versailles, Jobs consciously chose to reside in a comparatively modest residence that functioned without live-in staff or a security detail. The Jobs family gathered every night at the kitchen table for dinner. When Gates checks out Jobs’ home, he asks in wonderment, “Do you all live here?”

In the course of human history, “unwanted” children have jostled for their place alongside those who were part of their doting parents’ long-term plan.

As Catholics, we believe that children should be brought into the world through a loving one-flesh union of husband and wife, both committed to vows of faithfulness, permanence and fruitfulness. And social-science research confirms that children born to single mothers face multiple hurdles that may derail their success and happiness in adulthood.

As responsible adults, we’re duty-bound to make careful preparations for our future progeny. But hubris also can lead us to make ironclad predictions regarding the future of the “unplanned” children in our midst — as if our earthly visions override God’s providence.

Jobs’ biological mother sought to secure his future well-being by insisting that a college-educated couple adopt her son. Instead, two high-school dropouts provided a loving and secure home — and a garage where Jobs watched his father fix things and make them work. Meanwhile, the well-credentialed biological father left his children in the lurch.

A generation later, after an extended struggle with terminal cancer, Jobs fought to stay alive to witness the high-school graduation of his beloved son, Reed.

In the third installment of Toy Story, a Pixar film project that drew Jobs’ intense involvement, the character of Andy heads off to college and bids farewell to his own parents, prompting his mother to say, “I wish I could always be with you.”

Comments

Again another story of the emotionally wounded from the pain of a childhood with a physically or an emotionally absent father. These wounds cause a condition known as the orphan heart. We are now in a pandemic of fatherlessness. Understanding what the conditions are of an orphan heart and the process for inner healing is of utmost importance. It is all about establishing an intimate relationship with the Father. Having an experiential encounter of the Father’s love. It is a condition the majority of people do not know about and do not understand.
In 2010 statistics showed that the number of fatherless children in the United States was 18 million and 163 million in the world. This doesn’t even cover those with physically present but emotionally absent fathers. Today’s children seek affirmation from all the wrong places including gangs. They are longing to belong. They are aching for acceptance. They are trying to fill a void of a father’s love in their souls. There is an epidemic of soul sickness in this world.
We need to know who we are in God the Father’s eyes. God wants to have an intimate relationship with us and will use any means available to draw us close to him and His heart. But, it depends on our image of God.
So how do we develop our image of God? As children, we develop our image of God and understanding about love from our earthly fathers. Children are growing up without knowing a father’s love. The results are that these children become adult’s with childhood emotional wounds, just like I did. You may be one of them. How can we be good Christians, parents, spouses, and/or friends if we have an unhealed inner child? We need to experience God’s love. We need a personal encounter with the merciful Savior Himself to enable us to personally experience the love of Jesus Christ and the Father.
Seek Him and His love and know that you are His beloved child in whom He is well pleased.

I sympathize with the irritation “Merlin” feels about the “to(o) much ado about Mr. Jobs”. I, too, was feeling the same. But this article made me reflective of the unique human conditions each one of us are in and for that I thank Joan Desmond.

Posted by Cathy on Thursday, Nov 3, 2011 10:04 AM (EST):

Well done, Joan! Thanks for giving me a glimpse of a book I’ll likely not be able to read for a long time,and for your insights.

Posted by Nancy on Wednesday, Nov 2, 2011 11:22 PM (EST):

After Mr. Jobs passing the media compared him to Edison…I don’t think so. Thomas Edison invented things from nothing thru trial and error..Steve Jobs invented things that already existed which is a vast difference…not to take away from his genius. I also disagree that one must treat others with little respect to get things done and be the “big boss”...sounds like Mr. Jobs used this “unwanted” child crutch to explain away all his bad actions. Personally, it sounds like he was a good family man and father and to me that was his greatest success. Rest in peace.

Posted by ejiofor anthony on Wednesday, Nov 2, 2011 7:54 PM (EST):

Every child whether planned by the parent or not has a significant role to play in this world.most of the people that abort their child fail to know that the child that abort might be the person God might send to save the world in what the world is suffering or what might come up in future.let us has a human heart to stop abortion because if we were aborted,how would we have been existing now. God help us all

Posted by Sharon on Wednesday, Nov 2, 2011 6:37 PM (EST):

So much has been said and written about his arrogant behaviour. Folks, you really have no idea. I worked in hospitals all my life, were this type of behaviour is the norm, and many women employees “take it” before they “burn out”. Think about it, many doctors behave this way in order to communicate exactly what they need and want to treat a patient. Nice is not what you need in a life or death situation when minutes matter. The language I heard was no differnent than Steve Jobs. I suspect many industries driven by urgency and over complicated by bad information have leaders just like him. I think we have major communication problems born of a high divorce rate, an education system that is troubled, and an unwind of core family strength, core community ethic, and a loss of human closeness. So, that’s what Steve Jobs did, fix our communication barriers with simplicity, all the while using the spoken word in the context of how we talk to each other. When his Ipad is prevalent as a means to communicate patient information accurately, there will be a quantum leap in healthcare. Doctors will not need to shout and yell at people to get them to function. Siri, the voice recognition in Iphone 4S is a magnificent start to fixing a lot of bad communication in many industries where exactness and perfection matter. Wait and see.

Posted by Lee on Wednesday, Nov 2, 2011 6:26 PM (EST):

Enlightening piece, thank you. I hope advocates will consider discarding the laden language “putting up for adoption” and gently replace with “placed for adoption.” Subtle change but important difference.

Posted by MA on Wednesday, Nov 2, 2011 4:17 PM (EST):

Yes, his birth “out-of-wedlock” is definitely an example of not throwing away unwanted babies because those babies may contribute greatly to this world in the future. And I sympathize with his family’s loss as I would with any other family who has lost someone. But all of this hoopla treats him like a new saint, the Saint of Techno as a earlier commenter said. He is definitely not Jesus and not John Paul II. He was arrogant; he treated people badly who he considered inferior to him. Please let’s keep his life in the perspective of his beliefs and actions.

Posted by sampson on Wednesday, Nov 2, 2011 4:02 PM (EST):

chyeauh ight jobs was awesome! Sad he wasnt christian though but i bet you beleived in jesus as savior

Posted by The last man on Wednesday, Nov 2, 2011 3:09 PM (EST):

Sorry but Mr. Jobs supported almost every left wing cause on the planet.I am not sure what this pangeric by Ms. Desmond serves.

Posted by Betsy on Wednesday, Nov 2, 2011 2:19 PM (EST):

May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. May that include Mr. Jobs. We need not make him out to be a sain, but I do think “much ado” about him is fine…he was an incredibly talented individual who though fallen like the rest of us and perhaps a bit more lost than some of us, appears to have used his talent for the good of mankind, as best he could. He certainly helped move us forward in huge strides technologically speaking and while doing so, did far better than many others (probably myself included) might have given similar success. At the very least, we should honor him for what he did; it was not insignificant.

Posted by TRS on Wednesday, Nov 2, 2011 2:09 PM (EST):

I don’t know what to make of all the noise about Steve Jobs being adopted. I think it is great…. but I wish it wouldn’t be presented in such a way to seem something less than normal.
,
I am an adopted adult myself… and I particularly dislike the term “unwanted” - every child is wanted by someone. Didn’t his adoptive parents want him? Indeed they did.
.
and so much focus on Jobs’ abandonment issues. I think that has more to do with one’s mental state than by way of adoption.
.
I guess I am blessed to know that I was an adopted child… who was wanted, and never felt abandoned. I wish we could spend as much time on beautiful, normal adoption stories as we do adoption stories of woe.

Posted by David Carlon on Wednesday, Nov 2, 2011 1:55 PM (EST):

Jobs’ alleged last words prior to crossing: “O wow! O wow! O wow!

Posted by Merlin on Wednesday, Nov 2, 2011 1:46 PM (EST):

I was not making light of Mr. Jobs’ death in my previous comment. I am sorry for his family. However, his passing has received way too much attention in the media. Anyway, I’m not upset about it, in that I doubt he will ever become the 34th Doctor of The Church.

Posted by Merlin on Wednesday, Nov 2, 2011 1:37 PM (EST):

I’m sorry, but there is much to much ado about Mr. Jobs. So, has he become the “Patron Saint of Technocrats?” Enough!!!!!

Join the Discussion

We encourage a lively and honest discussion of our content. We ask that charity guide your words.
By submitting this form, you are agreeing to our discussion guidelines.
Comments are published at our discretion. We won’t publish comments that lack charity, are off topic, or are more than 400 words.
Thank you for keeping this forum thoughtful and respectful.